


Teeth

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, periphery liquidmantis and bosselot tbh, quote unquote historical cough, self indulgent cliches like woah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7470576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange werewolf au in which lycanthropy is a form of magic utilized by special military operations.  David is one such soldier tasked with rescuing a nutty inventor slash magic expert, Hal Emmerich, who also happens to be his ex lover.  Picture this happening in a weird 1700s-ish fantasy world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> … I don’t know wtf this is either. Just trust me.
> 
> This is 10000% inspired by medieval fantasy au talk on twitter (send all complaints to itsastanaphon at the tweets dot com who should be producing an amazing bosselot story pretty soon with knights n shit *vibrates*) and also thelonebamf who accentuated it with more hrrrngh and magic. Hopefully I am not stealing any thunder by succumbing as well to vaguely historically based fantasy aus but holy shit this is my jam.
> 
> My 18th century historical cred: I watched Pirates of the Caribbean once, I got this. No but I wanted to dink in something like that time period because it’s just after when werewolf witch trials were a thing and that’s what inspired this magic system. (Anachronisms abound tho tbh)
> 
> Hefty author’s note, let’s get to the story ;)

I.

 

David Sears was esteemed in neither appearance nor personality, only blood.

He sat now in his colonel’s office and he was proving that a person can slouch in even the most straight-backed of chairs. His right leg was up on his left knee, his riding boots not shined and therefore scuffing his breeches, and he was slumped bodily over the chair’s arm, head on his fist, frowning. His brown hair was tied back with a dark blue ribbon but it had gotten windswept on the ride over here and now was a wild mess that he hadn’t bothered to fix.

He was the son of the governor, which was the only reason he ranked as a soldier in the first place and unfortunately also the only reason necessary to invite military perks. His colonel, Campbell, indulged him and even offered him some snuff. David declined. He preferred to smoke his tobacco, another eccentric choice that went unquestioned because apparently a man can do no wrong with the correct father above him.

“You have many talents, David,” Campbell said, putting the snuff box away unopened in his desk drawer. He was one of the few people to call David by his first name, mostly because he was an old friend of the governor’s. “So quickly, you’re turning into our best Wolf.”

David didn’t know how to respond to compliments about his ability to kill people. His mouth went thin and his eyes veered to a series of landscape paintings on Campbell’s wall. One thing he had in common with Campbell was that they both enjoyed nature, but Campbell seemed to enjoy it mostly in paint on canvas these days.

“I have a mission for you that might be of personal interest,” Campbell continued, folding his hands on his desk. “Our scouts have determined that a rebel militia has taken over one of your father’s country estates… They’ve turned the mansion and its grounds into a sort of fortress and are planning an attack against us and your father.”

“The old man forgot to watch one of his houses and someone stole it? That’s funny,” said David. “What exactly are they rebelling against?”

“Thus far it seems to be a personal attack. They want to press closer into the capital and eventually assassinate John.”

“Well, he is the governor and also not a great man.”

Campbell gave him a chastising sort of smile. “Don’t speak so ill of your father, David, he’s the man who made this military what it is today. He brought peace not only to the capital, but to this entire nation.”

That was exactly what David distrusted, but even he believed family matters should be kept quiet. “I take it this is another one-man stealth mission for me,” he said instead.

“Yes. You’ll be using the Pelt. Your mission isn’t to dismantle their power structure or even attack them, rather… It’s a scouting mission. We need a rough estimate of how many men they have and how they’re organized. Before we launch an actual attack however there is one other thing. This is secondly a rescue mission.”

“They have a captive.”

“Yes. An old friend of yours, actually. Our regiment’s previous sorcery expert, Hal Emmerich.”

David’s face was accustomed to frowning but now his frown deepened to new levels. In his mind he unwillingly pictured a mousey-haired man with thick round bifocals and a crooked smile.

“You remember him?” Campbell pressed.

“Yes… I remember him,” David murmured. “What’s Hal doing getting involved with rebels?”

“Well, in his defense, it was a kidnapping.”

“Why Hal, though?”

“There are rumors that in his studies Emmerich recently uncovered a new branch of evolution from the ancient magics… He might have discovered something unprecedented in weapons sorcery, and that’s what these rebels are trying to get their hands on. If they do get these spells, it could mean they’ll be after more than just your father’s life. And with no information on what these spells even are, they would be mighty difficult to contend with.”

“More than just extremists in an old mansion…” David was still frowning. “Colonel, I thought Hal retired from military service. Why was he studying weapons sorcery?”

“Ask him yourself,” Campbell said. “You’re to bring him back here when you’re finished.”

“And will he be a prisoner ‘back here’, Colonel?”

Campbell smiled cryptically, looking away.

… It didn’t matter. For all his unorthodox ways, the one thing David was any good at was following orders.

He sighed, bringing his lounging leg down to the floor and heaving himself slowly out of the chair. Instead of approaching Campbell, he approached one of the paintings on the wall, a sprawling and surprisingly dark scene of some gray fen in the early morning.

He eyed the wide strokes carefully, the sharp nibs of caked on paint.

He was waiting for Campbell, who also stood and strode to a cabinet in the corner, which he opened with a small iron key. Inside the cabinet was a stack of animal pelts, neat and musky, and Campbell sorted through them for David’s, a silvery wolf pelt with deep gray leather and the animal’s great head attached, eyeless and flecked with stark white hairs upon the muzzle.

Campbell brought this magic artifact to David and offered it to him. The soldiers of the Wolf regiment weren’t allowed to keep their pelts in their own homes lest they abuse the power, but every time Campbell handed this fur to David for a mission it felt comfortingly familiar in his hands, like an old friend. David stroked the pelt absently.

“It’s Shadow Moses,” Campbell said. “Your father’s estate that was captured, I mean.”

“I guessed as much,” David said. “I’ll go there tonight. Get you Hal and your information.”

“I have complete faith in you.” Campbell clapped him on the shoulder briefly, something that could have been a fatherly gesture in another life, if David had ever allowed such intimacies. With a gruff “hmm” of assent, David held the pelt to his chest and was escorted out by a servant.

The work of a soldier… It was at least something he could lose himself in.

x

Despite working out of the capital, David could hardly stand the city with its bustling people and grimy streets. When he wasn’t holed up in some barracks somewhere, he officially lived in a small cottage on the city’s outskirts, not far from a large graveyard. Even those ghastly headstones were preferable to town, and besides the priests would occasionally invite David over for drinks. Country priests always had the best wine.

David had to duck through his doorway, an unusually tall man, too tall for his cottage, and he made himself a stale sort of dinner and smoked his pipe until sunset. As before any mission, his heart was pounding the blood through him quickly, energizing him with a nervous excitement. He wasn’t sure he liked his work, but he did know the prospect of death made him feel more alive than anything.

… Well, apart from Hal. It used to be that Hal made him feel rather alive as well, but that was a long time ago. It would be strange to see him again under such circumstances… Coincidences. Fate. Something along those lines.

As the stars and summer fireflies began, there was a scratching at David’s door. He let in a stray dog who gave him an enormous toothy canine smile. This girl always came by at this time of night, and David fed her the scraps from his dinner and let her sit on his knee while he finished his pipe.

But he had work to do. Once the last crushed remnants of tobacco were useless in his bowl, he stood and unfortunately dislodged his dog friend.

“Sorry, girl, but I’m not a man tonight,” he told her. He left her to snuff around his home and leave on her own terms, the door open on the warm night, and headed upstairs with the enchanted pelt under his arm.

His bedroom was dark, tinted blue from a moonlit window, and he lit a series of candles on his dresser, reflected by a high mirror that likewise doubled the candlelight. He was somewhat startled by his own reflection, by how tired he looked with these particular shadows flickering across his face.

He did not have a noble face. It was broad and cragged, with a nose that had broken a few times, and stubbling hair constantly darkening his jaw. Sometimes he looked disturbingly suited for this killing business.

He undressed slowly, putting every article away in its rightful place, until he stood before the mirror naked, his muscular chest visible above the drawers, lined with hair and scars. He slung the pelt across his shoulders, a warm weight that he knew so well, the shriveled head nuzzling beside his neck almost kindly.

He spoke the incantation, felt it welling in his chest, and then the final words resounded only in his mind as his voice gave way to silence, his throat quavering with energy, with the dark incomprehensible coilings of the magic that gripped him. His reflection began to change, his bones snapped, his flesh burned, a pain so fierce yet so familiar that he whimpered rather than screamed, and he blew out the candles at the last possible moment so he didn’t have to look at his new self in the mirror.

The pelt took him, conquered him. It melted neatly into his flesh, until it was his flesh, its dried leather finding life and blood again in the surface of his body. At times the transformation was fluid, like water churning; at other times it was a cracking, jerking thing. But all together, the result was always the same. The pelt wrapped around him until it was his skin, until he had not only the flesh and fur but the shape of a beast.

David Sears had transformed himself into a wolf.

He was an unusually large, silvery wolf, with a white-specked muzzle and blue eyes that had a strangeness to them, appearing not entirely wolf but also not entirely human. He was still David—he examined his room carefully and began down the stairs. He was not only David, he was a soldier, with a mission of stealth to attend to.

The stray dog was lingering in the cottage’s doorway, and she wasn’t at all afraid of the great wolf that came up to her. David pressed his muzzle to hers and she gave him an eager lick.

It was a few miles to Shadow Moses, but the night was young and David’s wolf form was preternaturally quick, thrumming with an enhanced tireless energy.

Bidding his dog friend goodbye, he began his jaunt into the night, passing through the gravestones, an animal among the ghosts.

x

 

II.

 

Seven years ago, David thought he had fallen in love.

That was the year he first joined the military, or rather the year the military gleefully accepted him into its higher ranks thanks to his ancestry. Campbell’s Wolf regiment, a favorite tool of the governor’s, was newly formed back then, and eager to have pure blood on its roster, particularly the blood of David’s father, their most powerful benefactor.

Everyone kowtowed to David. Their words were placating and charming, like verbal boot kisses, and even though he was a brand new soldier he was everyone’s authority because he might, just might, bring favorable reviews back to the governor.

It was intolerable.

Even Campbell, who had known him since childhood, ordered for him to have special martial arts training and also private lessons in the usage of the magic pelts. In other words, David didn’t train with the other soldiers. He got special one-on-one lessons where he learned the same things but, presumably, with more prestige attached.

He was waiting for one such private instructor in the library when he first met Hal.

The library was part of an enormous military research institution in the capital, its books almost exclusively old tomes of magics and charts, half practical spellwork and half ancient secrets from the dawn of sorcery that had yet to be translated. Of course, the military was a leading patron of sorcery research, as many spells made for excellent weapons.

The Wolf regiment’s pelts, for example. Hal Emmerich was the one who had enchanted them, a thoroughly intricate and difficult business that only a few experts had mastered, and back then he was the leading researcher at this library.

David didn’t know that when they first met.

David was fresh into his twenties and ornery, and as he stood waiting for his superfluous teacher he began sifting through a bookshelf, knuckles shuffling the thick leather spines of old volumes on the magics of geometry or some ridiculousness like that. He pulled out a green book, which stood out because of its color, and flipped through it absently before shoving it sideways on top of the others, feeling restless.

He took out a number of books this way and put them back in the same disarray.

Then the clomping of shoe heels made him look up to see a skinny man storming toward him. Hal Emmerich. His hair was all curls, prematurely gray and thus at odds with his somewhat babyish face, not tied back and instead framing his head like a big nest. He never dressed himself well, always in a rather raggedy jacket betraying his modest upbringing, and trousers instead of breeches. He was here for his skills, not his class.

“Excuse me,” Hal said, standing himself up very straight indeed, the same height as David. “You’re ruining the books. They are organized by a system.”

Except this was not a polite chastisement. Hal was glaring at David as if David was the most deplorable oozing slime of a thing in the world.

David’s eyebrows rose impressively. This was very different than the usual worship with which he was treated.

It was so different that he found himself liking it.

As if possessed by this bizarre desire to be hated, David reached onto the bookshelf, maintaining eye contact with the fierce librarian, and deliberately knocked a line of books onto the floor. They fell with thunderous bangs and Hal’s face turned puce.

“Are you crazy?” Hal demanded.

“Do you know who I am?” David asked, somewhat amazed.

“Of course. You’re David Sears, and you’re a damned lunatic. Pick up those books immediately!”

“You’re yelling at the governor’s son.”

“Do you know those books were hand-written? Somebody long ago dedicated his life to those books and you’re tossing them around like a great oaf, I don’t care who you are.”

“You don’t care who I am,” David repeated, deeply impressed.

“I myself spent hours organizing them, so if you’re planning to deface any more property here I must ask you to leave.” Hal spat out the words like venom. “And don’t you dare step on them, or I will…”

“What will you do?”

“I will _destroy you_.”

For the first time in a very long time, David found himself smiling, a large and awkward smile that didn’t quite suit his face. It was perhaps so alarming that Hal’s anger was briefly surprised into trepidation.

“Are you really a madman?” Hal asked him warily.

“I’m sure of it,” said David. But he also knelt and began gently picking up Hal’s books.

Hal got the message, and gave him curt instructions on how to put the books back properly, in order. When the work was finished, David turned to Hal again with a contemplating gaze.

“I’m afraid we’re uneven because I don’t know who you are,” David said.

“I’m Hal Emmerich,” said Hal, adjusting his round glasses and still frowning for all he was worth, although now with an encroaching embarrassment at his own outbursts.

David laughed.

“What?” Hal demanded.

“I know the name. I hadn’t expected a master of sorcery to be even younger than me.”

“Some of us use our time wisely.”

Oh, David enjoyed this person very much.

Hal’s face had gone from puce to an awkward blotchy red-cheeked color.

“Why are you looking at me so friendly all of the sudden?” Hal asked.

“I apologize for the books.”

“You’re strange.”

“And you’re very honest. I admit, it’s nice for me.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because yes, I am a very strange and awful man and you’re the first to say it to my face.”

Hal’s expression had changed, gone somewhat thoughtful. Thoughtful but still highly suspicious.

It was then that Master Miller arrived, David’s scarred old instructor, and David bowed slightly in farewell to Hal, who was very flustered by that, clearly unused to signs of respect.

“You look starry-eyed,” Miller said to David as they left, Miller limping as he did and giving David a stern face. “You’ll irritate your father if you mess around with the mad scientist.”

Unfortunately, that was exactly the advice David needed to hear to make him want to befriend Hal thoroughly.

x

David was not a man of subtlety and so he began visiting the library regularly between training. It was amusing as the weeks went by to witness Hal’s expressions develop from testy wariness to chagrin to a sort of beleaguered acceptance. David did try to talk to him, but most of the time Hal was working, so instead David found himself reading randomly. It was a library, after all.

This seemed to interest Hal, who would sometimes abandon his scholarship to interrogate David. “Do you understand that?” “Do you like herbology?” “No, don’t read that one, I have a better book for that.” David learned a lot quite by accident.

One day as David was getting unexpectedly engrossed in a history of lycanthropy, impressed by the mechanisms of the pelts they used so easily, he noticed Hal get up from his desk and pace the room. Leave chair, pace room, return to chair, leave chair, pace. He also kept glancing at David.

David had no idea what this meant and was thinking perhaps he would finally be kicked out, until at last Hal approached him at his table. Hal was obviously trying for a casual air, despite his previous fidgeting. 

“Excuse me…” he said slowly, a shyness to the flit of his eyes. “I must ask a favor of you.”

“Why me?” David asked.

“I need a lunatic,” said Hal, with a surprising lack of meanness.

David smiled.

Hal took him to a back room and up a series of increasingly curling, increasingly narrow stairs until finally they reached a shabby door and stepped out onto the roof of the research building. It was a cool spring day, the sun bright after the library’s bookish drear, and they had a rather nice view of the courtyard between the library and one of the barracks. It was breezy and Hal’s hair flew about his face, getting into his mouth as he spoke.

“Are you aware of flying machines?” Hal asked him.

“I am aware they usually become falling machines,” said David.

“Bah, those ones just weren’t clever enough.”

As Hal continued to lead the way, long strides across the expansive roof toward the building’s edge, it became very clear what he was aiming at. Perched a few paces from the roof’s end was… something. David wasn’t sure what to call it, an invention of some sort except “invention” implied a level of sense and respectability, and he wasn’t sure that was entirely deserved here.

The thing clearly wanted to be a flying machine. It had wings, elongated canvas contraptions framing a large, low bowl intended as a sort of seat. It was all hooked together and cluttered with strings and leather and jutting wood planks, the clean light-colored sort of wood that could very well have been scraps.

Hal came to stand beside it with an expectant look at David, hands pulling back his scrubby jacket to rest at his hips. For whatever reason, Hal was trusting David with this experiment, and also looking very proud of himself.

“… It’s something,” David said.

“I need someone to ride it,” said Hal.

So he really did need a lunatic.

Noncommittally, David circled the contraption, inspecting it carefully, trying to suss out how in the world it was supposed to fly.

“What are these levers?” he asked.

“You cycle them with your feet and they flap the wings.”

“That is charmingly stupid.”

“Hush, it will work. Every scrap of this thing is covered in weight lightening spells.”

“If it will work so well, why aren’t you the one riding it?”

Instead of looking cornered, Hal’s face brightened with even more pride. “It needs two people: someone to power it, and someone to steer. While you’re in there working the wings, I’ll be out here with a spell for directing the wind. At the moment steering relies purely on whichever way the wind is blowing. But all we want so far is to just get it in the air, so that’s fine.”

“I think you’re the lunatic,” David told him. “I’m the governor’s son, you know. They hang people for murdering governors’ sons.”

“You’ll be fine. Just trust me.”

David did not trust anyone, frankly, but he was intrigued. If he did die, at least it would be a more interesting story than the finale his life seemed to be working up to otherwise.

With some grumbling, he hefted himself into the machine’s seat, and his reward for that was… a smile. Hal smiled at him, an easy enormous smile with the tips of teeth, and perhaps that would make anything worth trying.

The bowl was cramped, David’s knees up near his chest, but his feet could reach the levers just fine. He must have looked ridiculous, but Hal didn’t take much time to admire the scene and was already behind him, attempting to push the machine forward.

“Go on then, cycle the levers,” Hal quipped. “We’ll try to get you across the courtyard to that rooftop over there, the barracks.”

“Try?” David repeated, but he started putting his weight on the levers. It was harder work than he had expected, the muscles in his legs complaining at this unfamiliar exercise.

“You’ll need to go faster than that, David.”

It was the first time Hal had called him by name, and it was not lost on David that Hal chose to address him so familiarly.

He sped up his pace, and they were reaching the edge of the building now. Was he really doing this? There was a split moment when he still had the chance to stop everything and get out of here and call Hal an idiot.

But he didn’t. The moment was gone quickly, and then with a final push from Hal the machine was over the edge into insubstantial air.

That feeling of solidity giving way made David’s stomach fall into his boots, but thankfully that seemed to be the only thing falling thus far. Miraculously and somewhat clumsily, the machine floated high above the courtyard, keeping its altitude. David’s legs cycled vigorously, fortified by his suddenly pounding heart. He did not want to look down.

He couldn’t bring himself to glance over his shoulder back at Hal either, his face frozen ahead at the roof of the barracks across the way, their goal and more importantly solid goddamn ground. Then with a lurch there was suddenly wind at his back (Hal) and the canvas wings flexed and curled in their creaking work.

With the air pressing him forward so directly, it felt almost as if giant hands were cupped underneath him, protecting him and guiding him on speedily, but that was a passing thought because any comfort he might have found in Hal’s support was lost in his rocky landing on the barracks rooftop. He made it, but with a bumping and skidding sort of fuss. The machine spun in a few dull circles as he tried to steady himself on the new roof, and he wound up turned-around facing the library again across the courtyard. Had he really flown all that way?

He could see Hal on the opposite roof waving his arms and even jumping.

Despite his heart still pounding in his head, David rasped out a laugh and smiled.

This affection he felt was going to get him in some trouble, wasn’t it?

x

People had witnessed this stunt of course, the same as they witnessed David and Hal walking side by side back to the library, Hal smiling and chattering excitedly. Unbeknownst to the gossiping masses, this would be the start of a routine. David and Hal were about to become inseparable.

But first, drinks. Hal invited David to a nookish pub not far outside the compound, and David agreed adamantly, eager to shirk more of his propriety.

It was a dark and warm pub, filled to bursting with commoners even in the late afternoon, although many of them were simply sitting at the tables without drinks, like Hal. David, however, had the constant burden of money burning a hole in his pocket, and therefore bought drinks for everybody who wanted one, as well as tobacco for his pipe.

“Incredible,” Hal said, as they squeezed themselves into a couple of corner chairs. He was apparently unperturbed by David’s smoking, but he did have a habit of waving a hand every now and then to keep the smoke out of his face. The air was close in here. “I’m not sure how useful the machine will be in its current state for military purposes, but it’s a step towards something pretty spectacular, don’t you think?”

“Flying soldiers would be hard to beat,” David agreed. “Where did you learn all this?”

“With my rubbish upbringing you mean?” Hal smiled quickly. “My parents were researchers in sorcery as well. Not for the state, however, they were… well they were nutcases. My mother even blew herself up on accident. At least that’s what Father says.” Hal’s eyes shifted to the wall and he adjusted his glasses, his smile pinching shut on whatever further threads were dangling from that story. “I learned from them,” he said. “Turns out I had a knack for it, and lycanthropists in particular are hard to come by, so the military welcomed me into legitimacy, as it were.”

“Sounds like you worked hard for it.”

“Indeed.”

“That makes you the opposite of me.”

“Well,” said Hal, leaning back in his chair consideringly. “I wouldn’t say putting your life on the line as a soldier is entirely without honor, right? Something about protecting people.”

David snorted. “I haven’t even gone out in the field yet. You see, for the rich children war is a way of flaunting our class.”

“To be fair, my war is pretty self-serving too.”

David allowed him that, ducking his head slightly in assent, smoke curling from the corners of his mouth around the pipe between his teeth. Hal watched him closely.

“I’m not sure how to get my head around you, David,” he admitted, abruptly going shy. “You’re either a nuisance or very charming.”

“Charming? I don’t think anyone’s called it that before.”

Hal laughed, a little breathy and jumpy. “You’ll make a fine research assistant.”

David grunted, neither committing nor denying this.

Hal’s smile dug into his cheek, his hands nervously fidgeting in his lap, some combination of comfortable in companionship yet strangely guilty.

“Have you used your Pelt in training yet?” Hal asked finally.

The change in topic was unexpected but not altogether worrisome. “Only briefly.”

“What did you think?”

That was a difficult question to answer. It was painful, and the fidgeting on Hal’s face proved he knew it was painful, but the rush of power and heightened animal perception was something David could get used to. He craved it sometimes, deep in the night, sleeping alone.

“I’ll be alright,” David said slowly.

Hal’s smile returned wobblingly. “That’s good.” He sounded relieved.

Another instance where his flying machine didn’t crash, perhaps. The research assistant still alive and well.

David might’ve felt like he was being used, except then Hal began to ask him questions about himself. What is your life like, David? What makes you happy? Who is this Miller character you’re always training with? Why are you in my library all the time?

Hal was so genuinely interested that David answered the questions easily, opening himself slowly but recklessly to this person. When one of David’s responses was “I’m always in the library because I want to see you,” Hal burst out an enormous laugh, his face reddening nicely.

In a lot of ways, they both had been very foolish back then.

x

 

III.

 

Presently: Shadow Moses at night.

As a wolf David crept quietly across the grounds, paws light in the grass, ducking leanly into shadows, away from the limited glow of moonlight. He circled the entire perimeter, knowing the boundaries of his father’s old summer home well.

It had been a long time since he had seen Shadow Moses, and it seemed the estate had fallen into disrepair. The grasses were tall, the gardens coiling with overgrowth, and even a statue he passed had lost its marble head. Perhaps it wasn’t such a surprise that a militia had taken charge of the place so easily.

There were indeed men patrolling the grounds, in civilian clothes but with some nice-looking rifles and every so often the glean of a knife at a belt. He counted thirty men patrolling just on his circumspection of the lawn.

Surely there were more inside the mansion. As he circled closer to the house itself, he saw how the great white façade had chipped and been overtaken by dark climbing vines. In pure daylight, it must have looked a terrible mess.

He was spotted near the entrance to the servant’s quarters. He ducked his muzzle behind a prickly rose bush, the sort that hadn’t seen actual roses in years.

A pair of guards were all that stood between him and this grimy back entrance. One of them pointed out his hiding place.

“Did you see that? A dog?”

“Must be one of Madame Wolfe’s,” said the other guard, entirely uninterested.

David would have to change that. He snorted, whiskers flaring at his muzzle, and then began to keen lowly, a wounded weeping sort of noise.

The guards muttered to each other but in the end it worked. The two of them approached to investigate.

The enchantment on David’s Pelt allowed him to switch between three forms at will. The first, of course, was the form of a wolf. Secondly, he could change back into a man if he so desired.

The third form was a combination of the two, and exactly what the military had found so useful about lycanthropy.

When the two soldiers had come close enough, he rapidly transformed into this middle body, an awful bipedal beast with dark fur over lanky muscles, superhuman in size and strength, its head a great wolfish maw. It only took a swing of his enormous arm to take the guards out, too quick for them to even scream in their terror. He snapped their necks instantly.

As they lay in the grass in their own puddles of blood and skull bits, David bounded to the back door, shrinking again into a wolf before carefully nosing his way inside. It was all so very easy to him now.

The corridor was dark, his paws naturally quiet. He would need to find Hal now… He knew the layout of this house very well, but even so there were many potential hiding places for a captive.

The sound of boots down the hall made him duck into an empty office, peering through the crack of the doorjamb.

Someone familiar walked past. A man with long gray hair, pulled back neatly in a black ribbon, absently adjusting his red gloves at the wrist. He was dressed nicely, but only that, a person whose class was high enough to get him a nice jacket but not enough to excel at any more intricate fashion. He paused for a moment right outside David’s door, his eyes scanning the hall abruptly but calmly, as if sensing something awry, as if he could smell the death that had occurred just out the door.

Adam… Was this entire mission just a tumble through David’s past? Of course David recognized him, the servant who had served so long as his father’s most trusted confidant. Adam had helped raise the governor’s boys, with blasé efficiency. What on earth was he doing here with a militia bent on John’s demise?

The man seemed to satisfy himself with his survey and continued down the hall, disappearing around a corner in long, easy strides, the sort of man who carried himself like a king all while serving someone drinks on a platter. 

Something strange was going on here, something Campbell had failed to elaborate.

David could almost convince himself he’d imagined Adam. Almost. He crept out of his room and headed in the opposite direction to begin his more intimate exploration of the house and its security.

If David’s childhood had taught him anything, it was never to let Adam catch you.

x


	2. Chapter 2

IV.

 

Six years ago. By the time David’s first actual mission was approaching, he and Hal had become terribly close. Close enough that Hal worried about him in between his usual excited blathering about whatever magical machine he was building now. David could tell because Hal’s smiling was a little more manic and queasy.

“You’re the one who enchanted my Pelt,” David said finally. “Don’t tell me you’re doubting your skills.”

Hal spluttered, fumbling for a defense, and David grinned.

David didn’t say _I’ll be fine_ and Hal didn’t say _Be careful_ , but the gist of it was there as David sat quietly in one of the library’s back rooms, watching Hal tinker. They tended to understand each other like this.

That night, he and two other soldiers of the Wolf regiment met briefly with Master Miller and Colonel Campbell one last time to go over the plan again. It was simple. A band of highwaymen who had been terrorizing the main roads into the capital had settled into a country inn for the night—paying with threats from their pistols rather than coinage—and David was leading this small squadron of Wolves to get rid of them.

It was not necessary that the thieves be taken home alive.

Simple, so simple. It was all meant not to whet David’s teeth but to give him some easy glory, placate his status.

Of course, everything went to plan.

The Wolves crashed through the inn as terrible beasts, sent the landowners running and screaming, and bounded up the stairs to the bedrooms amidst a rain of the highwaymen’s bullets. Normal lead pellets didn’t hurt a lycan. They were unnaturally powerful, unbeatable.

They tore with claws and teeth, and perhaps this was where the simplicity became discomfiting. It was disturbingly easy to bite into a man’s throat and spray blood everywhere. Easy how fragile men were, how their muscle tore, how one bite could fill David’s mouth with the last bloody spurts of a dying heart.

Men were just meat after all.

When it was all over and they returned to the barracks, everything became hazy. David went back to being a human, and he could almost believe that murderous beast in the inn had been another entity entirely, even as he was washing the blood from his pale chin. He could taste the blood-iron, the raw meat, smell the gunpowder… But it all seemed a part of some different world.

The next day he spent with Hal, and it was normal, so utterly normal, until suddenly it wasn’t anymore, suddenly it all hit him at once, and then he was instantly choking on sick.

His strongest memory of that day was dry-heaving into a bush, with Hal’s hand firmly on his shoulder, Hal’s voice murmuring in his ear.

“It’s ok. Let it out. Everything’s going to be ok, David…”

x

 

V.

 

The halls of Shadow Moses were surprisingly empty, as David’s wolf claws tapped lightly against the floor. Where were the guards? Perhaps they were huddled up in some central meeting with their leader, in which case David’s luck was immense but possibly timed. Any minute now, the halls could be flooded by men, for all he knew. It was important to keep to the shadows.

He traveled past the kitchens and upstairs into the greater manor itself, inspected the large library and a pair of guest bedrooms. Another bedroom not far off he recognized as the one he and his brother used to share as children, as if bundling them up together could teach them a sort of disciplined comradery.

With growing impatience, he found himself in his father’s old office.

It hadn’t changed much since the summers of his childhood. A lantern, the sort better suited for the outdoors, was set haphazardly on the desk, and its dreary orange light flickered about the bookshelves lining the walls, the dusty tomes and paraphernalia, antique knives on decorative stands.

Large and forbidding behind the desk was a portrait of the governor himself, a younger version fresh in full military uniform with a stern, heroic expression. Many times a young David had stood examining this portrait, particularly the gold embellishments, the buttons of the jacket and the intricate threads of the painted soldier’s eyepatch, even when his actual father sat below it, flesh and blood and entirely without such pomp. If anything, John Sears himself always looked tired and unkempt. The man did not match the hero.

As David entered the room, his heightened sense of smell picked up something unfamiliar amidst the book-musk, something sickly sweet, but he didn’t have time to determine what it was before the door closed behind him with a gentle click.

He spun around, hackles raising.

At the very edge of the lamplight stood the shadowed outline of a man, slowly removing his hand from the closed door. Something in the darkness glinted, two unnaturally big round eyes reflecting the dancing orange light.

“Curious,” said a muffled, reedy voice. “That is not the mind of a dog in there. Yes, very curious.”

The man stepped forward, his bootheels strangely high and clacking, and the light revealed a ghastly phantom of history. The man was dressed entirely in black, a broad cloak that made his size indeterminable, and protruding from his face was a twisted mask, with big gaping glass eyes and a long birdlike beak curving like a dagger. It was an old-fashioned plague doctor’s mask. David had only ever seen one in engravings.

The man cupped the chin of his mask with spindly gloved fingers, taking a long loud breath that rattled in his lungs.

“… Well! It is David,” the man said. “You don’t know me, David, but I know you. Oh yes, I have heard very much about you.”

David growled, taking a step back and in the same fluid motion growing into a half-beast half-man, his enormous clawed hands still pressed to the ground on all fours.

The man in the mask didn’t seem impressed.

“And you know our Emmerich too,” he said. “So many curious coincidences.”

“Who are you?” David demanded. He could speak in this form but it was a rumbling, monstrous voice, slurred by sharp teeth.

“A witch like you. Perhaps you have heard of the Fantastic Psychic Master Mantis?” The man gestured grandly with a thin arm then curled it to the bend of his waist, a slow bow. “Sorcery of the mind is my art. I can see everything in you, David. Every memory, every thought. You don’t match that beastly exterior.” Mantis straightened, the mask’s reflective eyes staring emotionlessly out at David. “… Or perhaps you _do_. But I am not much interested in judging character.”

The skin pulled taut at David’s mouth, teeth flaring. “Aren’t you funny. Well Mantis, you must know pretty well that you’ve just closed yourself in here with a monster. I hope you’re ready to tell me where Hal is before I tear your throat out.”

“Hal,” Mantis repeated, spitting out the name. “You have some very nice memories about Hal don’t you?”

David rose to his hind legs, massive arms ready to swing, but abruptly froze midway. He… couldn’t move. It was as if his muscles had suddenly stopped listening to him. He was trapped in place, wolfish eyes rolling, and then reality lurched and his father’s office was gone.

Instead, he was sitting in the capital’s military library six years ago, a human, and Hal was in front of him.

“It’s alright, David,” Hal was saying. “You just had another episode… It’s alright.”

“Sorry.” The words came out of David’s mouth beyond his control, a pre-written script of his memories.

Hal’s smile was thin and sad. “Are you… going to be okay?”

“Yes. It’s fine. The missions are more frequent now so I’ll get used to it.”

“But it’s getting worse instead of better.”

“Worried about me?”

Hal’s smile faded and the sadness of his expression was something that would stay with David always.

Reality lurched again and suddenly they were walking side by side out in the courtyard. Hal was demonstrating a spell, making a top spin infinitely in his hand…

Lurch.

They were in that favorite pub of theirs, David smoking, Hal laughing so wide and familiar now, dimpling his cheeks. Every regular in that pub knew what they meant to each other before they did.

Lurch.

A chilly evening. Both of them bundled up in the library side by side, a squat and dripping candle between them. Hal was working until… until he was looking at David instead, shyly but directly. His eyes were a wet reflective grey in the scarce light.

“Would you hate me if I kissed you, David?”

“Honestly, I think I could hate just about anyone but you.”

Hal was too nervous for joking however, his jaw working, and David adjusted Hal’s lapels gently, knuckles grazing Hal’s chest.

“I would like it if you kissed me,” David murmured.

So Hal did.

Hal’s face was so close, glasses low. His smile was so close. His lips were soft.

But something was wrong, a sickly sweet smell that had permeated all of these memories, out of place…

Lurch!

David was in his father’s office again at Shadow Moses and instead of Hal’s face, he was looking into the ghoulish mask of Mantis, the plague doctor’s beak a mere inch from David’s muzzle, dark glass eyes instead of Hal’s glasses. David snarled and found enough mobility again to go backing up into his father’s desk.

“You haven’t even noticed your great weak point!” Mantis crooned. “What if I told you I burned our dear Emmerich alive? Would you still find the will to fight me then?”

This Mantis… He could read minds, manipulate memories… That sweet smell was heady in David’s snout, and he snuffed convulsively, trying to get it out, and Mantis let out a hissing wheeze of a breath that might have been a laugh.

“Fire is another of my pastimes,” Mantis said. He lifted a gloved hand slowly through the air, and the lantern on the desk levitated briefly, then crashed to the floor.

The candle inside roared in a supernatural burst of flame and then fire was spreading rapidly across the carpet, crawling up bookshelves, alighting the desk, popping sparks of book pages, John Sears’ portrait suddenly a burning devil in a hellscape. David was surrounded by fire and smoke, and Mantis stood calmly before him, arms out like a lazy crucifix.

“Fire is a great invention,” Mantis said. “It separates man from beasts, as they say. How does a lycan handle it, I wonder?”

No… This was impossible! David could feel the heat cloying at the edges of his fur, smell the smoke and the burning, but it had all happened so fast… This wasn’t an ordinary fire. Mantis could control his mind somehow, create illusions. Surely this wasn’t real! Surely even a madman wouldn’t set fire to his own base, standing calmly in the middle of it. Somehow David had to fight every one of his heightened animal senses and believe nothing.

With a deep bellowing roar he dove at Mantis, claws and teeth bared, a mass of fur-coated muscle, but Mantis lithely floated out of his way, levitating above the desk, in front of the governor’s burning portrait.

“I can foresee your every move!” Mantis cackled. “Do you really think you can defeat someone who sits so firmly in your mind?”

He was right. As long as Mantis could read his thoughts, there was no strategy David could possibly concoct.

If that was the case, then he would have to use an absence of strategy.

Mantis had forgotten he was facing a beast.

David focused on his own senses, his own heart, pounding strong but at an alarming rate, the frantic roiling of an animal’s heart, not a man’s. This borrowed blood, this borrowed body… David gave himself up to this monstrosity.

He surged forward, thoughtlessly, instinctually. Mantis moved to dodge, but it was not an orchestrated fight, nothing about it was finesse. Mantis evaded him again and again amidst the flames, but the beast followed, wild and foaming at the mouth, huge arms swinging.

“What are you-!” Mantis choked, and in that moment the animal finally caught its prey.

The monster’s claws ripped through Mantis’ torso, blood spraying.

The fire vanished into the relative darkness of the lantern sitting calmly on the desk.

David’s first returning human thought was to notice how very thin Mantis was under his paws as he pinned him to the floor. The cloak had hidden a twiggish body of protruding ribs, now gushing dark lifeblood into the carpet.

David was panting, but he was coming back to himself in this monstrous body. In a strange mimicry of a human gesture, he brushed aside Mantis’ mask gently with his clawed hand.

The face underneath was scarred almost beyond human recognition, noseless, pale. Like a stitched corpse. As the mask fell, it dropped leaves and leaves of some magical herb that had been pressed to Mantis’ mouth, emanating the sickly sweet smell that had haunted David throughout this battle.

“Fire…” Mantis wheezed. “Man’s greatest invention foiled by the idiocy of beasts…” He coughed, blood congealing at the corner of his mouth, a vibrant red.

“Enough of your jabbering,” David growled.

Mantis’ mangled mouth twisted into a smile. “You’re a lot like your brother.”

Even as a monster, David’s stomach went very cold. “Eli?”

“Yes. He’s the bossman here. Our grand rebel leader.” Mantis laughed, a wheezing choking in his thin chest. “You’re also a lot like _me_ , David. I think… I think I might have cared about someone once, but that is not why I’m here. We are both here to fulfill our roles, to follow orders. To kill. It’s not very romantic, is it?”

Mantis raised a thin arm weakly and one of the bookcases on the far wall shuddered and then slid forward on its own. There was a doorway hidden there, opening onto dusty darkness.

“Your father’s secret meeting room is back there,” Mantis said. “That’s where we’re keeping Emmerich.”

“What is Eli trying to do here, Mantis?”

“I’ve no intention… of helping you that much… heh.”

David stared down at Mantis, his own brother’s soldier, a man whose scarred face spoke of hardships David would never know the intricacies of. There were still bits of herb leaves stuck to Mantis’ chin amidst flecks of blood and it was strangely vulnerable.

“Do you have a last request?” David asked, a soft rumble.

“My mask…” Mantis swallowed mid-sentence on the blood welling in his throat. But David understood.

With clumsy clawed hands the monster gently placed the mask back over Mantis’ face, and Mantis took a long haggard breath.

“Yes… quiet…” Mantis murmured. “It’s quiet, Eli… I want to be alone…”

He didn’t seem to be lucid anymore, and David watched as Mantis’ frail body took its last shuddering breaths then went still.

There was no triumph in this.

The beast rose, Mantis’ blood going hard and black in his claws, and lumbered toward the bookcase’s secret entrance. It was a travesty of victory.

But somewhere down that dark corridor, Hal was waiting for him. On all fours, David entered.

x

 

VI.

 

David’s upbringing had always been militaristic, and his childhood memories of summers at Shadow Moses were flecked with half-remembered routines and decorum. It made sense. After rescuing the nation and almost single-handedly reforming the military, John Sears had been named governor for life, and that meant a life of duty and therefore sons who needed to be proper.

The governor was always distant, having forfeited the joys of fatherhood for politics. When he did call David into his office to speak with him, it was always with a weary appraisal on his face. He was a hard man to read, particularly for a child.

Yet David did have a memory of the four of them taking a plush carriage out of the capital, headed for Shadow Moses. The four of them: the governor, Adam, David, and David’s younger brother Eli.

How John Sears had acquired his sons was mysterious. David had never met his mother, but according to gossip she had been appropriately high class.

Eli was not so lucky. The general consensus was that Eli was a bastard. The governor never confirmed nor denied this. One day when David was still a babe, the governor simply brought home another boy, and that was that.

David sat next to Eli inside the carriage, the seat plush, David nine years old, Eli seven. The boys looked startlingly alike in the face, but Eli’s hair was wild and blond.

Adam sat next to the governor across from them. The governor fidgeted uncomfortably in a fancy jacket. He had taken off his eyepatch to let the ragged scars over his right eye breathe in the summer mugginess.

This memory… It was strange, because it involved the governor smiling.

Adam started it. “I have a riddle for you, boys,” he said, one leg lazily crossed over the other. “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

David had heard this one before, but didn’t particularly want to play. Eli muttered something like “stupid.”

Adam raised an eyebrow, the carriage bumbling along, and the quiet would go on infinitely if David didn’t answer, wouldn’t it? The governor was looking at him with an unidentifiable intensity, so David cleared his throat and said, “A man. I’ve read that one… A baby crawls on hands and knees. Four legs. A man walks on two legs. Then an old man walks on two legs plus his cane. Three legs.”

Adam smiled. “That’s exactly right. Now here’s the joke. What walks on two legs, then one leg, then no legs, then two legs again?”

David didn’t know that one.

Eli scoffed. “Sounds like a man who got his legs blown off.”

“That’s also exactly right,” said Adam. “It’s a soldier. He starts just fine with two legs, but then he loses one to a cannonball. Loses the other to a bayonet and the doctor’s amputation kit, maybe.”

“But then how does he have two legs again at the end?” David asked.

“Those ‘legs’ are actually his hands as he prostrates himself in prayer,” said Adam. “A good legless soldier always finds God at the end, that’s how the story goes.”

The governor snorted, and that was when the smile appeared, unexpectedly large.

“And the bad soldiers, Adam?” John asked.

“They drink of course. Come to think of it, I have yet to meet one of those good soldiers.”

The two men grinned at each other conspiratorially. Somehow this dark joke had given David a glimpse at the man he never knew within his father… It was a rare moment of unrehearsed humanity.

“Not a very funny joke,” Eli grumbled. And perhaps the smile Adam had coaxed out of John was truly magical, because when John looked at his sons then there was warmth in his eyes, fleeting but honest.

David wondered if perhaps his father really did love him.

The moment ended, however, and that summer at Shadow Moses was strict and cold as usual.

David had another strong memory of that time.

Every morning, he and Eli sat at stern little desks in the mansion’s makeshift schoolroom, and Adam drilled them on their texts and arithmetic. One day, the boys were especially rowdy and sour. They never got along, and as a child David didn’t fully understand that was because Eli was supposedly a bastard.

David bore the weight of continuing his father’s legacy, the chosen heir to be groomed to perfection.

Eli got nothing, and so it was with jealousy and anger that he frequently lashed out at David and everyone else. As an ignorant child, David simply thought he was a menace.

That day in the schoolroom, their petty rivalry went to unexpected places.

“David,” Adam snapped. “You aren’t paying attention.”

David glowered down at his grammar workbook. “I’m sick of it,” he muttered.

At his side Eli smacked his arm roughly and mocked him. “Sick of being a dumb oaf?” Eli hissed.

“Shut your mouth, you little worm.”

“David.” Adam was clearly annoyed. “Your father’s heir isn’t supposed to talk like that.”

“What about _him_?” David demanded, gesturing at Eli.

“I’m not talking about him, I’m talking about the heir.”

“Well it’s stupid. I don’t want to be any old way.”

Adam was smacking a long wooden pointer in his palm, slowly, rhythmically. He typically used it for tapping along the chalkboard up front, but his expression had gone dangerously calm. He was more of a military man than a teacher.

“What are going to do, hit him?” Eli sneered. “You’re just a servant, Adam, you can’t hit the governor’s son.”

“No… You’re right,” Adam said. And in a flash of a movement, too fast for either of the boys to really register, he swung the pointer brutally across Eli’s cheek. Eli inhaled a sharp gasp, somehow a small noise in comparison to the thwak against his cheekbone.

A great white welt bloomed on Eli’s face, the middle going red and dripping the tiniest hint of blood. Eli’s eyes and mouth were wide open, and he let out a high keen of pain before snapping his lips shut stubbornly.

“I can’t hit the heir, but I can hit the bastard,” Adam said, his voice strangely quiet. “David. If you don’t want your brother to be beaten, behave yourself.”

David’s eyes were the size of saucers staring at Eli’s face, which was rapidly reddening with the effort of holding back tears.

David disliked Eli, but he didn’t want another child to get whipped to crying because of him.

He behaved himself very well through the entire lesson, rigid and silently obedient.

When class was over, Adam placed his pointer up on the edge of the chalkboard with a light clack. Was Eli’s blood on it?

“You may go, David,” Adam said. “Eli, stay.”

David obeyed, was fumbling out of his chair immediately, pressing his books to his chest and hurrying out of the room. But his conscience kept him hanging at the door, heart pounding. Just out of sight around the corner, he spied on the room, on his unlucky brother.

Adam strode to Eli’s desk, removing a handkerchief from his breast pocket.

“Get away from me,” Eli snarled. His eyes were shimmering, tears of anger and hurt pride and a child’s shamed fear.

Instead, Adam bent before him, almost like a bow, and with incredible gentleness daubed at Eli’s bleeding cheek with the handkerchief.

“I’m a servant just like you said, Eli,” Adam said softly. “You and I both are simply doing our duty.”

Eli’s tears finally fell as he sniffed and grit his teeth. Adam wiped the tears away carefully, each one falling perfectly into the corner of his handkerchief.

“You’ve done very well,” Adam said.

Adam and Eli always had a strange understanding for one another. Adam was the one to dole out Eli’s punishments, both deserved and undeserved, but he was also the one to nurse Eli’s wounds. He pushed Eli in his own studies, something that should have been unimportant—who would care if Eli wasted away an angry unwanted fool?—but Adam was perhaps the one person in the world who believed Eli could amount to something on his own merit. Eli hated him with the same vicious loathing he had for his father, but there was an edge of respect to it as well. They simply understood each other.

It made sense that Eli would grow up to organize a militia bent on dethroning his father, some glorious act of revenge, scraping for the only honor he could grasp.

But what about Adam?

Adam, who once reset Eli’s broken nose after a fight with another schoolboy, his expression strangely proud and fond… Adam who, that very same evening, stood speaking closely with the governor, their bodies curving toward one another with a certain ease and naturalness that belied their difference in class, a deep rumble of quiet conversation, always laced with secrets…

Whose side was Adam on now? Father or son?

Had he ever been on a side to begin with?

x

 

VII.

 

After the death of Mantis, David lumbered into his father’s secret meeting room, cramped and dark, the doorway small for such an unnaturally bulky beast. A pair of tall candelabrums stood at the corners opposite the door, and otherwise the room was bare, save for a single short table surrounded by simple chairs.

At the head of the table, Hal was tied to one of these chairs, his arms wrapped behind him, elbows jutting, thick rope binding his torso and lower legs. His head was lowered, chin on chest, and when David entered he thought perhaps Hal was unconscious.

Then Hal looked up, and his eyes widened behind his glasses. He was appropriately terrified to see the hulking monster that approached.

It had been so long since David last saw him. He had forgotten the more precise details of Hal’s face… yet they clicked back into David’s mind with familiarity. Hal was a few years older now. The lines around his eyes could have been sleeplessness or they could have been the beginnings of crow’s feet. He hadn’t shaved of course, and stubble was smattered unevenly along his chin.

He didn’t seem hurt except for a small bruise under his eye. David was glad for that.

“Hal,” David rumbled, approaching slowly around the table, clawed hands dragging across the floor. “It’s me.”

Realization dawned on Hal’s face. He was the one who had enchanted David’s pelt, after all. He must have recognized the patterns of fur and white-specked muzzle, known exactly whose pelt this was. For some reason, the realization on his face twisted into something utterly distraught.

“David… You’re here to kill me?”

David stopped a mere few feet from Hal’s chair, his wolfish head hovering close to Hal’s side. His hot breath moved Hal’s hair.

“Kill you?” David said. “I’m here to rescue you.”

“Rescue?” Hal’s face went slack, utterly dumbstruck and pale.

David snuffed, a low grumble in his throat, and then heaved to his hind legs, his great monstrous hands framing Hal’s shoulders with exaggerated care.

Very, very gently, he sliced through the ropes with his claws.

“Why would I be killing you, Hal?” David asked, as Hal massaged blood back into his arms. David’s hands hovered over him, large and not much use for comforting.

Hal laughed, a hoarse crackling noise that was more bitter and sad than humorous. He was blinking back tears, but hid this by adjusting his glasses.

“Oh David… They really didn’t tell you anything, did they?”

He looked up, and unexpectedly reached a hand forward to pet along David’s long snout, up to the soft fur between his blue eyes. David blinked slowly. Hal’s hand was rough and warm.

“Hal?”

“I’m alright.” Hal took his hand away quickly looking chagrined. “Let’s get out of here. I can explain once we’re not in the middle of an enemy fortress.”

David bowed down to slice the ropes around Hal’s legs, and Hal stumbled to his feet, wincing and leaning into the table.

“What’s wrong?” David demanded.

“It’s nothing terrible just… I’ve twisted my ankle. That will be an annoyance.”

Very slowly, David cupped one of his beastly hands at the small of Hal’s back, claws just barely brushing the cloth of his shirt. His hand was so large it practically engulfed Hal, who was skinny at best to begin with. David pulled him closer as gently as he could.

“Lean on me,” he growled.

Hal was staring up at him and swallowed thickly. “Alright.”

“Stay low. If we run into any trouble, get behind something.”

“I promise I won’t get in your way.”

“I never said you would.”

David snuffled, shook his massive head, and then transformed into a full wolf, smaller, easier to manage. This way it was also more natural for Hal to lean against him, a hand on the wolf’s back propping him up.

“Thank you, David,” Hal said, absently petting between David’s shoulders.

Then they began their escape.

x


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's um... been awhile orz Forgive me, have some dogs.

VIII.

 

A memory: a bed.

It didn’t take long for David and Hal’s easy friendship back then to become sexual. If anything, it became too much too quickly.

And it kept being too much. As David frayed at the edges, drank more and shaved less, the nights in Hal’s quarters became more frequent and desperate. Like maybe they could smash out all their problems in the sport or at least pass out trying.

One night, Hal stopped him.

They were both looking the worse for wear. Hal was at the end of a week of late nights, with bags under his eyes and stubble of his own. David was… a mess. His own late nights were from the anticipation of nightmares rather than work, and he’d let himself spiral into an irritable disarray, protected by nasty looks and inattention when people pried. Hal was the only one whose opinion mattered anyway, and Hal was being passive. His constant concern could be brushed aside just as easily.

The bed was Hal’s, and there was nothing but them and the moonlight through the window. David’s hands roamed blindly up Hal’s sides, but with familiarity. He kissed Hal hungrily at the base of his throat. There was something particularly exhilarating in that. David knew how fragile a throat was these days, could probably rip one out even with his own human teeth if he really tried to, but he could also kiss tenderly here at the soft hollow that shivered under his lips when Hal swallowed.

That’s what their sex had become—this strange dance of not-quite violence, of potentials not actualized. At least that was what it was to David, flaunting gentleness. When particularly drunk he sometimes asked himself what it was to Hal, but never found the right answer.

“David,” Hal murmured. David could feel his words vibrate in his throat under his teeth. He bore over Hal, pressing a knee between his legs. “David.” Hal’s fingers curled at the back of David’s hair briefly before clamping onto his bare shoulders. “Stop.”

David trailed kisses up under his chin, but Hal’s hands were firm, pushing back now. “Stop.”

David stopped.

He couldn’t see much of Hal’s face in the dark, just an outline of his features, a sharp nose, and the vague white sheen of his eyes looking up at him.

“What’s wrong?” David asked, and was surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice.

“You’re shaking,” Hal said.

Now that David had stopped he realized how wobbling his arms felt holding him over Hal like this, and indeed they shook. He pressed himself back onto his knees, rubbing a hand down his face.

“I’m worried about you,” Hal said, not for the first time. “You’ve really…”

“What?”

Hal couldn’t say it, but David knew him well enough now to know what it was. _You’ve become a different person._

“It’s part of killing people,” David said dismissively. “I’m fine, I’m not the dead one.”

“You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine for months.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

Hal’s eyes closed, so his face was just dark planes for a moment. He breathed deeply and evenly.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Hal said finally.

David swung a leg off the bed, heaving himself off of Hal to sit at the edge of the bed and stare out the window at an almost full moon. He simply waited.

He listened to the blankets shift as Hal sat up, could practically feel Hal’s eyes on his back, but Hal didn’t touch him.

“My father’s the one who taught me lycanthropy,” Hal said, the words falling quickly like they had to all get out before some undetermined time limit. “He had some grand ideas about it, actually… He believed that wearing the pelts would unleash the witch’s inner animal instincts, allow them a venue to explore the feral corners of their psyche. And then when they took the pelt off and became human again… my father thought they would be a purer human, thanks to their time as a beast. He thought he’d found a way to… compartmentalize our sins. If we could heap all our evils into the form of a dog, then surely we could live as better humans, without those animal urges tainting our more civilized endeavors.”

Hal paused, and David grunted, more to show that he was listening than because any of this rambling made sense.

“It was only natural that his theories would be used for war,” Hal continued. “If killing enemies is the duty of the beast rather than the man… well, maybe that could save us somehow, save our souls from the worst sins of all.”

“I don’t think so,” David murmured.

“I don’t think so either,” Hal said, voice catching. “David… I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“ _You_ have?”

“Yes. This is my creation. I didn’t start wars but what I’ve created to augment them… the burden it’s put on you and the other soldiers… It was all just my foolishness, blindly telling myself I wasn’t here creating weapons, destroying people, but that’s all I’ve been doing.”

“It’s not your fault,” David said, getting irritated. He’d never once blamed Hal, so where was this coming from?

“No, but it’s my responsibility.” Hal huffed a huge sigh that David could feel warm against the skin of his back. “I can’t do this anymore. I… I can’t be a part of this.”

So that was it.

David hadn’t realized he was so tense until now, when suddenly everything slumped, like his muscles couldn’t hold themselves up any more.

“You’re leaving,” he said, so Hal didn’t have to.

“Yes. I’m…” Hal laughed, cracking and jumpy. “I’m not cut out for the military.” He pressed his forehead against David’s back. “Come with me.”

“Can’t.”

“I thought you’d say that…”

“This is where I’m supposed to be.” That was the simplicity and the complexity of it. David’s blood landed him here, and now the fact he’d shed the blood of other men kept him in this world. He couldn’t just pretend to have a normal life now. This was who he was.

“I’m sorry,” Hal said. “I need to go. I can’t stay here.”

“I understand. You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“I do to you.”

David huffed out a dry laugh. “Sorry for ruining your goodbye sex.”

Hal flinched.

Silence.

“You’re a good man,” David said softly.

“Stop…”

“Will you think less of me in your new life?”

Hal sat up abruptly, reaching fumblingly for David’s face, turning it to look at him over David’s shoulder. “I could never.”

They watched each other in the darkness, trying to find whatever they needed from the other’s expression, but it was too dark to see.

In the end they wound up sleeping together, just sleeping, Hal’s arm looped around David as David stared ahead at a dark wall, thoughts endlessly spinning, staving off sleep. Hal was too skinny to provide much adequate warmth, but the feeling of his hair brushing the back of David’s bare shoulders was calming. Hal clung to him tightly in his sleep.

The next few days Hal actively began leaving his post, but on some level David never quite understood nor believed it. The day came when Hal was at last saying goodbye to him, and even then it was hollow. David knew logically he may never see Hal again, but he didn’t feel it in his guts, as if it was all happening between two different people.

Hal didn’t cry, and vaguely David was proud of him, but he didn’t say so.

They didn’t kiss.

Strangely that was what David would regret the most later.

That was the last time he saw Hal before Shadow Moses.

x

 

IX.

 

Now at Shadow Moses, David crept low through the halls as a wolf, with Hal crouched beside him, his knobby hand pressed into David’s fur.

By now the two guards David killed on entry had probably been found, almost certainly if Adam had a position of authority here, which would necessitate an alternative exit. Many of the secrets of Shadow Moses still remained mysteries to David even in adulthood, but there were a few passages he knew from those childhood summers, places where he hid away from his brother and the servants. He was always a quiet child who liked to be alone.

One of those passages connected the ballroom via an underground tunnel to the groundskeepers’ quarters across the lawn. Assuming the groundskeepers’ little shed was unused now, it could be their best chance for a stealthy escape.

They made their way down a short staircase, moving slow and low, side by side. Hal leaned over David somewhat, face almost in the wolf’s back.

“Why aren’t there any guards,” Hal murmured.

David had been growing increasingly perturbed by this as well. There were no patrols actually inside the mansion as far as he had seen. Instead, the only people David had encountered were Adam and the strange Psychic Master Mantis. Eli was arrogant, but he wouldn’t leave the entire mansion’s insides unprotected.

It seemed to David perhaps the few men guarding the inside were simply the most powerful. Perhaps one or two were all Eli needed, particularly if witches were involved.

Eli had unpredictability on his side and David hated it.

Their careful shuffling progress finally brought them to the dark looming entryway of the ballroom. The twin doors were already flung open, and there were no lights within, only cavernous shadow. It was a modest ballroom in size and was rarely used in David’s memory. It was only too fitting that it would settle into dust and cobwebs now, when the entire mansion had been left to rot in its own ways.

David led Hal quietly inside. The high ceiling made Hal crouch reflexively lower against David’s fur, and David’s already heightened senses also sat on a razor’s edge. It was that animal instinct, the memory of being prey, that made the darkness on all sides so foreboding and tangible.

But David’s eyesight and sense of space were at least good enough to follow his memory toward the portrait at the far wall above the secret passage.

They were halfway across the room, right in the center, when David suddenly stopped, hackles raising.

“What?” Hal hissed, and David regretted the inability to tell him to be quiet.

He could smell other dogs. Hear the scrabbling clacking of claws.

It all happened too fast for David to do anything except press against Hal’s side protectively.

Then the two chandeliers burst into enchanted candlelight, revealing that David and Hal were circled entirely by a pack of enormous wolf dogs, snarling frothily.

The doors closed, and high-heeled boots tapped against the dusty floor behind them. David and Hal both turned stiffly and carefully, avoiding any sudden movements.

A tall, beautiful woman in riding breeches stepped to the edge of the circle of dogs, resting a thin hand on a dog’s head. She wore a man’s jacket, pressed at the buttons by a large bosom, and long tendrils of blond hair.

“Madame Wolfe,” Hal stammered.

“Leaving us, Emmerich?” the woman asked, her icy expression unchanging. “But you were so eager to join us in our mission.”

David glanced quickly at Hal before transforming into his more monstrous form, part man and part wolf, with the power of both. He would need it if this was going to be the fight it looked like.

In response, Madame Wolfe lightly tapped between the ears of the dog at her side with two long fingers. The dog seemed to darken, a strange inky outline emanating from its fur, and then it warped and pulled and separated into two dogs, identical and equally large and vicious, flanking Wolfe on either side.

“Those aren’t dogs…” Hal murmured, instinctively pressing closer to David. “Those are familiars.”

More magic then.

“I can’t let our hostage leave, so I’ll be killing your escort now,” Wolfe said smoothly, still speaking to Hal.

“Wolfe please, there must be something— Are you really so loyal to this plan?”

Wolfe’s eyes darkened. “Yes,” she said simply. She raised her arm and the circle of wolves charged forward all at once.

“Down!” With a massive hand, David knocked Hal to the floor and crouched above him. David was the target but something in the bland contempt of Wolfe’s expression told him she wouldn’t at all be heartbroken by Hal meeting his demise in this battle as well.

That was frightening. David’s heart hammered, and time seemed to slow, honing in on heat and bared teeth. He was all too willing to gamble with his own life, but Hal’s…

He swung a huge arm to strike down the two familiars to arrive in front of him, using the momentum to spin himself around, stepping hastily over Hal to turn in a large circle of teeth and claw. A familiar jumped on his back, biting viciously between his distorted shoulder blades, and he flung it off with a roar, bending backwards to slash again in the direction he’d started. The dogs just kept coming, an endless supply, and though David was stronger than any one individually, he quickly felt his muscles tire, his heart pounding in the anxious frenzy of more and more bodies swarming over him and underneath it all Hal curled with arms over his head, utterly breakable.

David cursed, a feral snarl, as he heaved two more familiars off of his back, and in the same moment Hal cried out in pain. David’s heart skipped in its frantic beat, and he wheeled back to grab a dog in his very teeth to pry it away from Hal. The dog’s jaw took half of Hal’s sleeve with it, the tear lined with Hal’s blood.

David curved protectively over Hal, a fur and muscle shield, and in the narrow space between their faces he growled “Run at Wolfe.”

Hal’s eyes were wild with fear, but he wasn’t hurt beyond the gash in his arm and the gray of his face. He didn’t seem able to respond.

The dogs were biting viciously at David’s back and limbs, and David grit through it, glaring down his snout at Hal. “ _Run at Wolfe_ ,” he repeated. “I need to get to her, but I won’t leave you.”

Hal finally seemed to understand, and shakily got his legs underneath him.

The rest was a blur of bodies, as Hal rushed blindly into the sea of dogs towards where Wolfe still stood impassively watching. David was right at his side, throwing the familiars aside in arches of his paws. He was tiring, Hal was nearly useless, but in an instant they were upon Wolfe and she was no match for a monster…

… but not unarmed.

She whipped out a pistol and aimed it directly at Hal’s chest.

Fatigue, desperation, fear… Some combination turned off David’s thoughts entirely in that moment. He was all animal as he knocked Hal ferociously aside and took the bullets himself.

Lucky for him, they weren’t silver. They tore through his weakened, bloodied body but he tore through just as surely, straight through the rest of Wolfe’s dogs to the spellcaster herself.

Like an animal, he tore her apart.

x 

When the witch died, the familiars died with her, just like Mantis’ flames. They all fell like bags of sand, piles of dead dogs, some bloodied some simply dropped like puppets across the ballroom floor.

David stepped back from Wolfe’s body to breathe, to come back to himself. Everything hurt… He didn’t know the extent of his own wounds, but none of them were enough to impair him significantly. The blood would dry and congeal, like it always did. But he was terribly tired.

Hal—thank the gods—stood. His arm was bright red with blood dripping down from his torn sleeve, smearing up his neck, but the way he moved, the arm moving with him naturally, meant he wasn’t sporting anything dangerous.

He stumbled forward through the mess of dog bodies. Not toward David, but toward Wolf. Hal stared down at her gored body, his face going pale. He shook his head.

“There’s something sad about these people,” he croaked. “I can’t really explain it… They’re hopeless. They’re rebels with an insane goal, but… in a way they’re kind of a family to each other.”

David lurched toward Hal, until he was altogether too close, looming near enough for his muzzle to huff foul canine breath in Hal’s face and for fear to cross Hal’s eyes.

“Whose side are you on exactly?” David growled, as Hal shrunk in on himself. “She said you joined them.”

“I… was tricked.”

“How?”

Hal didn’t seem to know where to focus on David’s too-close monstrous face. He looked away. “The militia here, their target is your father. They’ve gathered followers by spouting stories about reforming the military, lessening Governor Sears’ hold on our people and also other nations through magic. They believe some weapons shouldn’t exist, and that part of their mission is true. But… it’s all frivolous at the core of it. It’s lofty ideals sitting on a rickety base of revenge.”

“You thought they were something greater.”

“Yes. They lured me in with the promise that I would be fighting against the governor’s establishment of weapons sorcery… But once I was here, I became their prisoner.”

“You have something they want.”

“A weapon, yes. Recently in my studies I learned of a magic with the power to take thousands of lives at once, to demolish entire cities in a blink. That to me is the perfect example of a weapon that should not exist. That sort of magic should never be militarized…”

The same question David began with arose again. “Why were you studying this kind of magic if you left the military, Hal?”

The corners of Hal’s lips pulled tight. For a moment, David suspected Hal would lie to him. But instead, Hal turned to his face again, staring determinedly down David’s snout.

“It wasn’t enough just to leave,” Hal said. He stood taller now; the fear wasn’t gone but he no longer relented to David taking up his space, so that their faces almost brushed now. “I’d contributed to it, I watched how healthy men were torn apart by this magic, how indiscriminately they slaughtered whatever the governor called an enemy. I watched you…” He paused, chin raising. “The military’s magic usage was getting out of control and once I knew that, I needed to relinquish my part in it. But I also couldn’t simply live a life elsewhere ignoring my sins. I had to help stop it. I’ve… well, I’ve become a rebel myself. My expertise has been helping fringe groups challenge your father’s military.”

“You’ve committed treason.”

“I don’t regret this,” Hal said firmly. “You haven’t been sent here to rescue me, David. You’ve been sent to take my knowledge out of these rebels’ hands, sure, but also to bring me back to give this weapon to your father. Before he has me hanged, anyway.”

Hal shook his head and of all things stepped forward, so that David now was the one to ease back.

“I have no intention for this weapon ever to be created,” Hal said, his voice and expression so uncharacteristically unrelenting that it left David breathless. “My studies now are about foreseeing potential weapons and finding ways to immediately dismantle them with counterspells. I refuse to give this information to the military, and I was foolish to believe the stories of the group here, but I won’t give them this magic either, not now that I know they have every intention to use it. Not only that, I will do everything in my power to sabotage such endeavors. That’s what my life means now.”

The fight left David, and he found himself hollowed out and shakingly respecting this person. This man was both entirely different than the one David had known, and yet exactly the same.

“You’re really stubborn about this, aren’t you?” David rumbled softly.

Hal’s posture sagged as well, no longer a dare, just a tired man who hadn’t eaten in however long, bloodied up, with a certain thread of emotion pinching the corners of his eyes.

“Yes,” Hal said. “I’m sorry.”

David didn’t want to pry with questions in this moment, but he curved forward, his blood-caked muzzle almost touching Hal’s shoulder.

“I never stopped loving you,” Hal mumbled. “But it got bigger than just the two of us.” 

Before David could respond, the eerie note of a howl rose from the corpses.

David immediately pulled Hal close with a large clawed hand, as one of the dead dogs rose, a huge white wolf. It was different than the others… In one grotesque yet fluid motion it grew larger and ganglier, bipedal. It was the same monstrous form David was in, partway been man and beast.

Another lycan? Hidden among the familiars…

David growled warningly and the huge white lycan threw its head back and laughed, a twisted combination of human mirth and animal snarl.

“I was hoping perhaps Emmerich would tell you his secrets right here and now, in a fit of romance,” the lycan said. “Perhaps he’d even trust that spell to you! Mantis did say the reason he was particularly weak to my manipulation was because he saw you in me. But this works just as well, I think. Wolfe has helped me tremendously on the path to killing you… She lives on through her revenge, brother.”

David’s hackles rose, staring down the other lycan like looking in a miscolored mirror. “That’s you, Eli?”

“Of course!” The lycan flourished with his massive paw. “Here to avenge my family. You’ve had quite the strenuous night, David. I have no qualms about delivering the finishing blow when you’re already down.”

David stepped in front of Hal pointedly. “You say that after prattling about family?”

“An underdog doesn’t play with honor,” Eli bit out. “We don’t take unnecessary chances. This fight has been by my rules and it’ll end that way.”

David felt Hal’s hand press against his side, and motioned with his head for Hal to get back to the wall. Just as gently, the pressure of Hal’s hand left again, his footsteps quiet but audible as he backed away.

There was so much going on, too much to process in this moment. Ties of country and blood and everything in between. But one thing David knew he could fight for was to protect Hal. He wouldn’t let Eli’s wrath near this person who was so important, not when they’d only just been reunited.

“Finish it, then,” David roared.

Eli bounded forward with a frothy snarl.

x


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh... This is the end. At least it's all I had planned for this story, so I hope it works out. Man, this is one of the first multi-chapter things I had going in this fandom. It's short but it was a long haul, so thanks so much to those of you who stuck with me despite that! :')

X.

 

The last time David had seen Eli was well before the military, when they were only halfway between children and men. Eli was sent away to finish his schooling, and perhaps on some level the boys understood this might be the last time they would see one another, the strings of their lives pulling them into separate corners.

Eli had grown his hair long, some sort of rebellion David scoffed at, a mess of blond framing his face like the mane of a lion. Something bold, except the effect was ruined by the black eye David had given him a week ago, now an ugly green color.

Eli grinned, eyes sharp with challenge, and offered a hand to his brother.

David took it firmly, and they held on for perhaps longer than needed.

Warm, callused hands. David would continue his education at home, while Eli would finally have the distance he’d always wanted.

Maybe David envied him a little. Meanwhile, Eli’s envy had always been obvious.

“Good luck,” Eli said, and then spit into the dirt outside his carriage, as if to get the platitude out of his mouth as quickly as possible.

“Same to you,” David said stiffly.

Eli smirked, as if expecting something else. David braced.

But nothing else happened. They had no other words or taunts or posturing. Instead, Eli heaved himself into his carriage, his young body already growing into wiry muscle, and David watched his one strange companion leave forever, with much too little circumstance.

Unexpectedly he found himself wishing well for his brother, whatever that may be.

In truth David would never know what happened next, Eli’s own forays as a soldier, his rebellion, the people he called his friends. It was all just empty spaces.

From that point on they were in parallel lines, unaware as the other strode forward in his own direction.

x

 

XI.

 

Eli had lost his mind.

The creature that swung its massive white claws at David was more monster than man, spraying foamy spit as it whipped its head back for a bite, teeth clacking loudly on air. Was this what David looked like to his enemies? Was this what they’d both been reduced to?

But there was something more to Eli’s unhinged attacks, as David dodged and they circled each other snarling. Eli wasn’t holding anything back, no skill or planning. This was pure quick bloodthirst. Every ounce of Eli’s pride and greater goals were not important here. All that mattered was tearing out David’s throat.

They were alike in that way.

Circling each other, hunched, their monstrous hand-claws dragging on the floor amidst the piles of dead dogs, they growled low in their throats. David’s gray fur was matted with blackened blood, slowly healing, and Eli’s pristine white almost glowed in the dim room. Suddenly Eli threw his head back and howled, a triumphant lonely keen of a noise, and David surged forward right into Eli’s waiting arms. 

They tore and bit at each other, rolled and twisted amongst the dead dogs one of them was destined to join.

In their childhood they had always fought, and not always in the nice ways of irritated brothers. They gave each other split lips and bruises and one day, after Eli tried to send David tumbling down the stairs, David cracked and beat his brother to a bloodied pulp. They hated each other, but also they hated everything about their situations, and their respective human counterpoint seemed the only place to throw the punches.

Was there any kindness in their upbringing? Maybe. Maybe David had no problem trying to stick a thumb in Eli’s eye, but couldn’t bear the thought of Eli under Adam’s wrath. Was there any part of David that Eli had protected all those years too? Was there any memory Eli held close?

It was an impersonal hatred. It wasn’t the same as the hatred for their father. It was simply fate, that one of them must die because Eli’s “family” was gone and Hal needed protecting. Because they’d been bred to be dogs all their lives and this was simply how it worked. They had jobs to do, and they were on opposing sides.

And dogs liked a fight, didn’t they?

As they rolled and tore at each other, tasting each other’s blood and fur in their mouths, claws sinking in… This was an intensity of life unlike anything else.

You got addicted to it, to the crunch of bone, the whining of your prey underneath you before they threw you over again and suddenly you were the one on your back.

So close to death. So fragile.

That was what life was for animals, wasn’t it? Even the great hunters. Always so close to death, starvation, disaster…

The joy of staying alive was the victory of killing.

Pain was everywhere, in the new bites scouring David’s flesh, but also his old aches and wounds as his body pushed itself to its supernatural brink. It was almost like freedom, biting, clawing, rolling through the blood, stinking with it…

He tore Eli’s skin in his teeth and kept tearing.

They weren’t boys any more or even men. They were monsters.

In the pounding of his own heart and head, the gnashing of his teeth and tearing of his claws, it took several moments for David to realize the body entwined in his was no longer attacking.

He kept tearing, tearing. Almost hoping for the fight to continue.

But it was over.

Panting through his nose, he finally opened his jaw and let a hunk of fur and meat fall back to the ragged remains of his misshapen brother. The white fur was deep red.

David stumbled back, staring.

Was that it? It had been so simple. Their fight was supposed to be endless.

But Eli was dead, his strangely animal-human eyes glassy and blood still dribbling from a cracked jaw.

David stepped back again, only to bump into one of the dead familiars. Bodies were everywhere, of his doing.

Maybe more moments passed unnoticed after that, but then Hal was at his side, clutching at his shoulder, saying something.

“David… We have to go… Don’t think about it…”

In death, Eli would never be human again.

It was easier to be a wolf at this moment. So David turned fully animal again and followed Hal, both of them slow and plodding with their injuries, toward their secret exit.

The tunnel was cool and dark, and David could hear his heart pounding in his own ears. The stink of death morphed into the wet of earth and mildew, and then they emerged into a dusty groundskeeper’s shed, packed with tools that would probably never be used again.

David couldn’t quite process his surroundings, even as Hal crouched beside him and led him to the shed’s door. Even when they were out in the overcast night again, with Hal waiting desperately for David to take some initiative again, tell him where to go, David could barely feel the cool air on his wounds, the bite of freshness in his lungs.

Hal’s hand was warm on his side.

Eli was dead.

But there was no time for David to be gone from himself.

Finally, Hal jostled him with an urgent hiss: “ _David_.”

David came back to alertness with a horrible twist of his gut, but he followed Hal’s gaze back to the mansion.

The top central window had a balcony, and standing there, illuminated by the chipped white of the ivy-choked façade was Adam. David would know that stance anywhere, a common man of utmost dignity.

Adam’s arm was extended, his omnipresent revolver aimed straight at them.

The game was over. He’d seen David and Hal’s escape, and David stiffened, waiting for the inevitable call to the guards, the swarm of people to capture them after everything they’d been through.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, with a flick of his wrist, Adam cocked the gun away, letting it point lazily up at the half-obscured stars. With his other hand he gestured expansively at David, as if wishing him farewell.

David didn’t know how to take that, except to understand that no bullets were coming their way, at least not yet.

He nudged at Hal’s legs until Hal got the message and laid over the large wolf, arms wrapped around his neck.

Then with careful speed, David ran as fast as his enhancements would take them away from the grounds.

Soon Shadow Moses was far behind them, and not a pursuit in sight.

x

The sun was beginning to rise when they found themselves amongst the churchyard’s graves, David’s home visible nestled ahead in the trees. Hal’s cheek pressed warmly between David’s shoulder blades, rested in rough fur. The crumbling stone angels with lichen-warped faces set David vaguely on edge, still used to human-shaped bodies meaning guards to avoid, but even this paranoia passed into straight fatigue as they left the headstones behind.

David was as tired as he could ever remember being, straight to his bones and then somewhere deeper. His pace was very slow by the time they crept into his still open doorway, with birds beginning to twitter, as if the whole night had never even happened. It seemed strange that birds and people existed entirely unaffected by the events at Shadow Moses.

David had suspected Hal might be asleep, but instead he slid off of David the moment they crossed the threshold, standing creakingly and going to close the door softly. David kept going, crawling with utter exhaustion up onto his usual chair.

Finally, _finally_ , he let himself turn back into a human.

He imagined he must look at absolute wreck. His wounds were superficial and half-healed already by the magic of the pelt, but the blood had smeared and caked just about everywhere, a good deal of it not even his own blood. He hunched naked in his chair, with the enchanted pelt draped innocuously across his shoulders. Just a tired, hollowed out man.

Hal seemed unfazed by David’s nakedness, but he also averted his eyes and started toward the stairs. “Clothes are upstairs, right?” Hal asked, but he knew already, he was simply filling up space.

“Do you finally think less of me?” David asked instead, his voice nothing like a growl now, just a rasping croak.

Hal paused on the first step. “… You found no peace in it,” he said.

“Fratricide is fratricide.”

“I know the kind of man you are, David,” Hal said, with a thread of irritation that told David not to approach the matter again, and then continued up the stairs out of sight.

The house was dark except for a mellow sort of red glow from the sunrise through the windows. It felt almost like it could lull David to sleep, except he doubted he would sleep well again for a long time.

Now in the absence of more pressing matters, David’s mind returned to Adam.

Adam had the perfect shot, yet clearly he chose not to take it. Why? What had he been doing there in the first place? His gesture had been friendly recognition perhaps, but also felt deeper. Something like a send off. Or even gratitude for a job well done.

David could feel the edges of truth threatening his weary consciousness, twisting his stomach.

Of course Adam would always be loyal to John most of all. He might have been able to trick Eli with feigned allegiance, Eli an angry desperate young man unable to resist the tiny morsels of a father figure he found in Adam… It became clearer now, in this gooey sunlight. As distrustful as Eli always was, he still failed to see the obvious treason in his midst.

Had this been John’s way of dealing with Eli all along? Giving him an illusion of revolution when really he was falling perfectly into the palm of Adam’s pristine red glove?

… What did that make David?

Hal returned with an armful of clothes, and froze on the bottom step again. Something of David’s thoughts must have appeared on his face and made his expression formidable.

David grunted, hunching further in his chair, and Hal took that as permission to approach.

He came to stand rather close, clothes held to his chest. He watched David’s face, his glasses rosy-tinted in this light.

“Don’t you have any medical supplies?” he asked softly.

David didn’t answer.

“Really,” Hal huffed. “You need to take better care of yourself…”

David did snort at that, a bitter sound. “Like you’re one to talk.” Fondness. That felt nice now, still there in the middle of everything else.

David gingerly cupped Hal’s elbow, eyes roving over the gash in his shoulder, where his sleeve was in tatters. The blood had congealed and dried a blackish color, making it difficult to discern where the actual injury was. But Hal rested his other hand on David’s wrist, and said “I’m alright.”

David grunted, pulling back to his chair again. Looking up at Hal like this, with Hal between his legs, was a tender sort of nostalgia. Hal held his gaze bravely for awhile, and David began to believe Hal would have the courage to downright kiss him.

But instead of anything glorious or romantic, Hal simply pressed the barest kiss to David’s forehead. Somehow that was sweeter. It made David’s heart ache in its dangerous honesty.

“I’m glad you’re alright too,” Hal told him.

“Mm.” David’s hand hesitated before settling firmly on Hal’s hip.

He felt suddenly like he wanted to cling to this person, hold him as tightly as possible or he’d die. But it was a passing foolishness. Like Hal had said, the circumstances were bigger than just the two of them now.

“David…” Hal was testing, his thumb picking at the clothes still in his arms, yet to be accepted by their owner. “What will you do now? You still have a mission to complete.”

“I may have already completed it.”

“What do you mean?”

David shook his head. He would tell Hal later… Right now he didn’t want to put words to the threads of understanding sinking in.

He had murdered his brother as his father’s tool. Finally gotten rid of a nagging obstacle.

But that wasn’t what Hal was referring to, was it? David had specific directions to bring Hal back as a prisoner.

“I won’t participate in your execution, Hal,” David murmured. “You’ll have to go. I’ll help you find a way to escape.”

Hal’s expression didn’t change, completely unsurprised, but also very sad. “Come with me,” he said. It was the same thing he’d said back then, now with the weight of one rejection, but no less hope in it either. Hal had always been good at having faith, even when he would so obviously be disappointed.

But David’s gut knotted, because he knew all at once that this must have been orchestrated too.

Everyone had known about his relationship with Hal… If anything, David had flaunted it, just to be contrary. If John had known that, he must have also known that David would be here with this choice to make.

And likewise, he must have known that David would choose Hal.

Was this his father’s way of letting him go? A reward for being a good boy? Or some warped version of affection?

Any victory here was hollow. Disgusting.

Hal’s hip shifted under David’s hand, his leg gently knocking the inside of David’s knee, and the solidity of this person brought David back to himself.

In the end it was the same as it ever was: Hal was the one thing David knew he could hold onto.

“I’ll go with you,” he said softly.

Hal’s eyes widened somewhat behind his glasses. “David…”

“If you’re working against my father, I’ll work with you.”

“You’ll be betraying everything you stood for.”

“I never stood for anything in my life.”

Hal’s mouth thinned. “You’re sure?” he asked, small and frail.

David nodded, an absent bob. “It’s easy to put my faith in you,” he said.

There was nowhere else to put it. Yet at the same time, he knew how entirely safe it would be here.

Hal was going to cry. Finally, after everything. David smiled crookedly, because he had been waiting for it. Hal all but shoved the clothes in David’s lap then went to stand at the window with his arms crossed, trying to regain control of himself.

David loved him. He’d always loved him, but after holding back the feeling for so long, it came back in an enormous rush, filling his chest.

He got dressed, then limped to Hal and circled a tired arm around his shoulders.

“The priests in that church will fix us up, they’re good men,” David said. “But I need rest first.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll leave. We’ll find root somewhere. I’ll watch your back and you’ll watch mine. We’ll manage something that way.”

Hal was still staring determinedly out of the window, his brow protruding in profile, furrowed and tight. His eyes were still wetter than strictly normal.

“I meant it when I said I still love you,” Hal burst out.

David smiled, a tired twist of a thing, but the warmth of Hal’s body against his side grounded him, like the texture of the wood floor under his feet. “I’m sure I’ll love you until the day I die,” David said plainly.

Hal’s arms looped around his waist, his head pressed against his shoulder.

The sunrise was beautiful, the overcast sky bursting into pink flame.


End file.
